Since 2004, Steel in the Air has served over 3,000 clients, reviewed over 10,000 cellular leases and tracked over 2,000 lease buyout offers. We represent private landowners, corporate property owners and public entities in lease negotiations against wireless carriers and tower companies. We also consult on cell site and cell tower valuation and brokerage. Our cell tower and cell site database has grown to encompass over 285,000 cell site locations nationwide.

Comparison of Large Tower Company and Wireless Carrier Tower Deals

We compiled a comparison of the three most recent wireless carrier tower company deals. It is important to note that these numbers aren’t exact. For example, the Tower Cash Flow for Verizon/American Tower are projections from the first year of operation. On the AT&T/Crown transaction, the number of towers is rounded off. Lastly, some like the Verizon/AMT transaction don’t include the net present value of the options to acquire these towers in the future.

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Of specific note, it is interesting to see that the Verizon portfolio has the fewest number of tenants per tower yet has similar cash flow per tower as AT&T and almost 50% greater cash flow per tower than T-Mobile. Also interesting is that the deal multiples for all three transactions are fairly similar. (Some analysts are suggesting that the actual multiple of cash flow for the Verizon portfolio is closer to 23 or 24 times.)

All in all, it appears that Verizon pulled a significant amount of value out of this portfolio given its lower tenancy per tower, lower annual escalation of 2%, and protection from future rent increases in the near term for additional tower modifications.